New Huxley gameplay video with analysis

Good things come to those who wait. In our earliercoverage of Webzen's upcoming MMO Huxley, we lamented the state of the in-game videos we saw -- a lot of running, nice scenery, but little else. Huxley-evolved.com has finally given us what we wanted with two videos available on blip.tv. At the time of this post, huxley-evolved.com's site was unavailable, so we're linking to the separate videos.

What does the first video tell us? Well, it's an FPS, which is a relative rarity in the MMO scene, and just behind that in little-seen-in-MMOs, it's Science Fiction. The traditionals are all here -- jumping, strafing, etc. Neither this, nor the following video feature any melée weaponry. We do notice that there's no HUD in this video, however, which some will like and some won't, but the second video does have one, so apparently it's toggleable. It also seems to take an extraordinarily long time to die, with hit after hit being scored before the opponent finally lays down. On death, a voice speaking Korean recites what we'll guess is a countdown. If our Korean-speaking audience members would care to drop a comment enlightening us, we'd appreciate it.

At one point we see a player blink into existence (2:40), though it's not clear whether this is a spawn point or the result of a teleport. It's shown that a corpse can still be fired upon and take damage (3:24), and there might have been stealth in effect in the same section of the video (3:26).

Swimming around underwater creates slight visibility loss (4:22), but there also seems to be a concomitant depth of field effect, with closer objects more in focus and detailed than farther objects. Water does not seem to impede projectile speed. At one point (4:42), the viewpoint player picks up a couple of glowing objects, which he loses upon his death, but what they represent is unknown.

At (7:10), a tanklike vehicle is entered, which puts the viewpoint into 3rd person follow. This vehicle seems immune to most small-arms fire, and features 3 gun turrets, with at least one firing bullets and another firing an energy stream. A smaller vehicle is seen at (8:46), but the viewpoint player seems unable to enter it. A voice says something, possibly in response to the inability to enter the vehicle. Once again, a Korean-to-English translation would prove helpful, O Constant Readers.

What do we learn from the second video? There's some nice HUD info coming from the weapon's reticle, which cycles through a circular animation to let you know when you're ready to fire again (0:27). The hit indicator lets you know where the damage is coming from via a secondary, outer circle that updates with your shooter's location, as opposed to the typically-seen flash of red from one of the cardinal directions (0:38).

During the match, we noticed some quick blue outlining of a fellow player (1:13) which our viewpoint player does not fire at, leading us to believe that this is a teammate, though it could merely be that he has picked up some ammo, or the previously-mentioned stealth in effect.

There's some sniper scope action, during which you can see one of your opponents get boosted up to a great height (2:26), presumably by means of a jump pad, though this is speculation. In another section, a sprint mode is engaged, during which the scenery blurs to simulate speed (2:38).

As characters die, they appear to de-res away, presumably to appear whole at some central location. There are both humans and monsters being fired upon, so we'll guess that this video is showing us both PvP and PvE. A strange bit appears at the very end, where a large creature is seen through the scope going through its idle animation (3:26). The viewpoint player is firing an energy weapon at it, which either isn't doing any damage, or what damage is being done is minor. Regardless, the creature just stands and takes it, never charging the player or even really reacting to being shot. The weapon changes over to bullets, and finally the monster goes down.

All in all, Huxley looks pretty much like any other FPS, which, considering it's also an MMO, might be counted as a point in its favor. It certainly runs smoothly enough, but it's unknown what sort of hardware was being used to run the game. Finally, what all this has to do with Aldous Huxley, the author of the novel Brave New World, remains beyond our understanding. Perhaps it will all become clear in time.